"hazing", OED sense 3, needs work

[Victor Steinbok]

It's more like a brutal secret or informal initiation rite, not
horseplay. And it's in no way limited to colleges. Military units,
fire/police departments, sports teams all have been known for hazing (as
for colleges, the most identifiable would be the military academies and
that's because of their military nature, not because of being colleges).
In fact, colleges and freshmen are two characteristics that are
completely irrelevant to a general definition. Hazing is generally
practiced by groups that, in some way, pride themselves on exclusivity
and being cooperative units and the practice is meant to induce the
sense of unity in new entrants (in some bizarre, twisted logic, but
that's the theory). If anything, freshmen would be the /target/ of
hazing, not those practicing it, which is exactly what the quotations
show--but the same applies to rookies, newbies, and otherwise novices in
all sorts of groups.

The current description of hazing 3. seems to fit what these days would
be recognize as being punked. That's not the same thing at all,
although, I suppose, at one point, it might have been called "hazing" at
"American Colleges". But even the three examples from the 1800s do not
refer to "horseplay"--Harvard: "absurd and barbarous custom"; Yale:
"unhappily lead to the death ... and denunciation ... as stupid and
brutal"; Princeton: "outrages of recent years".

     VS-)

On 7/13/2012 9:52 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> Under "hazing", n., we find:
>
>    3. A species of brutal horseplay practised on freshmen at some
> American Colleges.
>
> Very Johnsonian!  But he's a bit out of date.  Freshmen?  (He forgets
> the marching band at Florida State.)  American?  It has crossed
> several oceans, I'm sure.  Colleges?  It reaches down to the elitest
> prep schools, if not lower.
>
> Joel

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